netdev - Re: [bnx2] [Regression 4.8] Driver loading fails without firmware

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Date:   Mon, 31 Oct 2016 11:43:17 +0100
From:   Paul Menzel <pmenzel@...gen.mpg.de>
To:     Baoquan He <bhe@...hat.com>
Cc:     Sony Chacko <sony.chacko@...gic.com>,
        Dept-HSGLinuxNICDev@...gic.com, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, dyoung@...hat.com
Subject: Re: [bnx2] [Regression 4.8] Driver loading fails without firmware

Dear Baoquan,


On 10/31/16 11:09, Baoquan He wrote:

> On 10/26/16 at 12:31pm, Paul Menzel wrote:
>> Baoquan, could you please fix this regression. My suggestion is, that you
>> add the old code back, but check if the firmware has been loaded. If it
>> hasn’t, load it again.
>>
>> That way, people can update their Linux kernel, and it continues working
>> without changing the initramfs, or anything else.
>
> I checked code and this looks good to me. I can post a patch with this
> change to upstream, see what maintainers and other reviewers say.
>
> The thing is I don't understand quite well about your requirement. With
> my understanding, you just didn't add bnx2 firmware into initramfs, but
> later opening the interface can still request that firmware with "ifup
> eth-xxx" command. Is that correct? If yes, requesting firmware twice in
> probing path and opening path looks good.
>
> However I am wondering what's your exact steps to do this.
>
> What I tried to do is I execute command "dracut --add-drivers bnx2 -f
> /boot/initramfs-4.9.0-rc3+.img 4.9.0-rc3+" to build a new initramfs,
> meanwhile make sure bnx2.ko is included, then uncompressed initramfs and
> deleted bnx2 folder under lib/firmware/ of uncompressed initramfs. Then
> pack them to be /boot/initramfs-4.9.0-rc3+.img and restart. I did saw
> below failure message. But later how did you really make the bnx2
> network interface up? Could you say it more specifically?
>
> [    7.364186] bnx2: QLogic bnx2 Gigabit Ethernet Driver v2.2.6 (January 29, 2014)
> [    7.371706] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LN44] enabled at IRQ 44
> [    7.378128] bnx2 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw failed with error -2
> [    7.387619] bnx2: Can't load firmware file "bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw"
> [    7.387888] bnx2: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -2
> [    7.388990] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LN45] enabled at IRQ 45
> [    7.389370] bnx2 0000:01:00.1: Direct firmware load for bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw failed with error -2
> [    7.389371] bnx2: Can't load firmware file "bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw"
> [    7.389475] bnx2: probe of 0000:01:00.1 failed with error -2

Hopefully I understood your questions correctly, so that my answers make 
sense.

First, sorry for not saying that earlier, on our system the driver is 
built into the Linux kernel.

```
$ grep BNX2 /boot/config-4.8.4.mx64.112
# CONFIG_SCSI_BNX2_ISCSI is not set
CONFIG_BNX2=y
CONFIG_BNX2X=y
CONFIG_BNX2X_SRIOV=y
```

Second, the filesystem driver is also built into the Linux kernel.

On our system, there is a systemd service unit, which sets up the 
network device.

```
$ more /etc/systemd/system/network.service
[Unit]
Description=Network Connectivity
DefaultDependencies=no

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/mxnetctl start
ExecStart=/sbin/ip addr add XXX broadcast XXX dev net00
ExecStart=/sbin/ip link set up dev net00
ExecStop=/sbin/ip addr del XXX dev net00
StandardOutput=syslog

[Install]
WantedBy=network.target
```

During that time, the hard drive has been detected, and the filesystem 
has been mounted.


Kind regards,

Paul